#37 - March 2005
The link that exists, in principle, between democracy and an end to class domination has long been understood by socialists. In earlier times—from Plato to James Madison—it was also quite frankly acknowledged by the upholders of...
Latin America: Revolution and Counterrevolution
Introduction
Venezuela is a complex country that tends to confound the casual observer. As a result, everyone, especially the media and those who want to support and those who want to oppose the current...
Introduction
The death of Joaquín Balaguer on July 14, 2002 took many Dominicans by surprise despite the fact that he was 95. Many Dominicans thought that Balaguer had challenged the laws of nature “successfully...
US Activism and Cuba
The Current Debate
In the mid-1960s, when Che Guevara dropped out of sight to begin his guerrilla campaign in Bolivia, some on the left were asking whether Fidel had had him murdered. In the late 1980s, some were...
Empire and Metropolis
The Misfit’s Dilemma
“It’s no real pleasure in life.”
-- The Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
“When thinking comes to...
...after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. '...Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice, 'what that means?' 'Now you talk like a reasonable...
Manifest Destiny
From the annexation of Mexico to the occupation of Iraq, a common theme threads its way, as a kind of political ethos legitimizing brutal intervention in the name of democracy. While the first...
From the time Filipinos arrived in the United States as “colonial wards” or subaltern subjects in the first decade of the twentieth century, the practice of speaking their vernacular tongues (whether Ilocano, Cebuano, Tagalog, or any of...
Exchange
Introduction
David Baronov in his article, “Colonial Rule, AIDS, and Social Control in Puerto Rico” (S&D #34), is right to denounce the effects of US neo-colonial rule in Puerto Rico...
R.F. Price makes several salient points concerning the scientific claims surrounding HIV and AIDS. In this regard, I am pleased that my essay could serve as his starting-off point, so to speak. Price is certainly correct in criticizing...
Review Essays
The year 2004 offered up a number of notable socially critical documentary films. A few of these, especially Fahrenheit 9/11, reached an unprecedented American audience, impacting even the “mainstream” corporate media...
This article compares the standard English edition of the collected works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Marx-Engels Collected Works (MECW), with the international collected works project, the Marx-Engels...
Reviews
Edward Said, Freud and the Non-Europeans, with Introduction by Christopher Bollas and response by Jacqueline Rose. London & New York: Verso, 2003.
Ghosts cluster...
Irwin Silber, Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Sportswriter Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports. Foreword by Jules Tygiel. Philadelphia: Temple University...
Julian Markels, The Marxian Imagination: Representing Class in Literature. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003.
In the trio of critical concepts -- gender, race and class -- that often recur within...
Walter A. Davis, Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and the Tragic Imperative. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.
This is a book bristling with ideas and theories including theories of artistic cognition, of...
Michael Dawson, The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
This book provides a sociological analysis of corporate marketing, 'the larger...
George Snedeker, The Politics of Critical Theory: Language/Discourse/Society. Foreword by Michael E. Brown. NY & Oxford: University Press of America, 2004.
Perhaps at this moment...
Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004....
David Gilbert, No Surrender: Writings from an Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner. Montreal: Abraham Guillen Press, 2004.
In the 1960s and 1970s, some of the movement' s most powerful voices and most...
Stan Goff, Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004
Whenever I hear the term entropy I think of George Carlin delivering one of his many...
Elaine C. Hagopian, ed., Civil Rights In Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims. Chicago & London: Haymarket Books & Pluto Press, 2004.
With contributions from a distinguished group of...
Francis A Boyle, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2003.
The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Israeli Wall, published in July,...
The Forbidden Book: The Philippine American War in Political Cartoons, by Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio. San Francisco: T' Boli Publishing & Distribution [...
Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Luis Báez Hernández, "The DissidentsI:" Cuban State Security Agents Reveal the True Story. Havana: Editora Política [edit63@enet.cu...
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Emelio Betances is associate professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies at Gettysburg College, where he founded and directed the Latin American Studies Program. He is the author of The State and Society in...